NEWS Milan Synagogue Awarded a Prize by the Mayor

By Rossella Tercatin

The congregation Bet Shlomo has been awarded the “Ambrogino D’Oro” the highest certificate of merit given by the Milan municipality.

The prize, given by Milan Mayor Giuliano Pisapia, acknowledges the extraordinary story of a congregation that was started shortly after the end of the Second World War by Holocaust survivors and still represents an important center of Jewish life and culture for the city.

“After the Liberation, thousands of survivors of the death camps gathered in Milan where they were received in via Unione which was where the temporary headquarters assigned to the Jewish Community were located. Here they established a Beth Hamidrash, a study hall, with the books and furniture brought from the synagogue located in the concentration camp of Ferramonti in Calabria,” reads the statement released to explain the reasons for the prize. “Today the congregation and the connected cultural association continue to live in the heart of Milan and to represent a reference for different people coming from the city, from the entire country and from abroad. Here they can come together to pray, to meet and to learn.”

“I think is important also to remember how the survivors who established Beth Shlomo not only managed to start a new life for themselves, but also were among the people who made an essential contribution to the establishment of the State of Israel where many of them immigrated from Milan,” says Eugenio Schek, one of the most active members of the congregation, who received the prize together with his wife Nina and Beth Shlomo rabbi Shmuel Rodal (in the picture together with the mayor).

“It is a great honor to be awarded this certificate of merit because it shows how our synagogue is something of great value for the whole city”.